Art Spiel – Page 36 – Contemporary Art and Culture

January 8, 2024December 24, 2023

The Immigrant Artist Biennial – In Dialogue
by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

Portraiture, Archives, and Representation: Golnar Adili, Erika DeFreitas, and Jonathan Ojekunle

On the left: Jonathan Ojekunle. *Shining Light*, 2022. Oil, acrylic on canvas. 60 x 48 in. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial. Courtesy NARS Foundation. Photographed by Young Yu Don.

Oftentimes, in thinking about the representation of the human form in art, people can get very attached to the ‘abstraction’ versus ‘figuration’ binary. These respective styles frequently get coded as opposites, and certain kinds of politics are ascribed to each. For example, ‘figuration’ is coded as a kind of politics of representation, whereas ‘abstraction’ is a politics of refusal or resistance to legibility. However, the work of Golnar Adili, Erika DeFreitas, and Jonathan Ojekunle, all on view in The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone, functions beyond this binary in fresh ways. We interviewed the artists about portraiture and its relationship with archives and representation.

January 4, 2024January 6, 2024

A Story of Immigration, Heritage, and Identity: Invisible Bodies on View at Pennsylvania State University
by Kaitlin Anne Vervoort

Installation view, Invisible Bodies, at Penn State University (HUB-Robeson Galleries), 2023. Images courtesy of The Border Gallery and HUB-Robeson Galleries

Installation view, Invisible Bodies, at Penn State University (HUB-Robeson Galleries), 2023. Image courtesy of The Border Gallery and HUB-Robeson Galleries.

As one approaches “Art Alley,” part of the Hub-Robeson Galleries at Pennsylvania State University, it is the vibrant green walls that first draw one’s attention. Painted green for the “support for an open immigration system, allowing immigrants to contribute to the nation’s labor force, Invisible Bodies: An Exploration of Migrant Labor Through an Artistic Lens, curated by The Border Gallery and Emireth Herrera Valdes, brings together fifteen artists from diverse backgrounds to contemplate labor, immigration, and identity in the United States.

January 1, 2024December 24, 2023

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts
by Amy Talluto

Let’s Be Nothing Burgers

Stars in outer space with a bright star

Description automatically generated — Photo of Pandora’s Cluster showing ancient galaxies from the early universe by the James Webb Space Telescope, Feb 15, 2023, Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ivo Labbe (Swinburne), Rachel Bezanson (University of Pittsburgh)

Recently I was watching a guy on TikTok gently freak out about all the revelations coming back from the James Webb Space Telescope. His panic was so relatable because the images returning from deep space only reinforce how utterly minute we Earthlings are in the cosmos. The JWST is so powerful that, looking from Earth, it can sense the heat signature of a single bumblebee on the moon. And, of course, faced with this, he just shrugged helplessly and said, “We’re a total nothing burger.”

December 29, 2023December 29, 2023

Some Great Books
by Paul D'Agostino

Book Review

I didn’t have a mandate to compile anything along the lines of a ‘Best Books of the Year’ list, so I didn’t. There are plenty of those out there already anyway. Some even feature hundreds of titles. Hundreds! The restraint is impressive.

Nevertheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t spread the word a bit about some books I really did relish reading this year, so what follows is a short list of standout titles and a few words about each. Limiting my picks to 12 – plus a couple brief extras I couldn’t resist folding into the mix – seemed logical enough, and they appear here in no particular order. My selections run a gamut and include fiction, nonfiction, essays, critical theory, humor, architecture, art, material history, and a charmingly assembled byproduct of social media. Additionally, several of the titles are books in translation, and ‘excellent syllabus material’ for various types of courses, especially interdisciplinary ones, would be a viable subcategory for nearly everything included here.

December 27, 2023March 6, 2024

The Immigrant Artist Biennial – In Dialogue
by Xuezhu Jenny Wang

Images and Art: In and Out of Politics with Carlos Franco and Keren Anavy

Keren Anavy. *Archipelago*, 2023. Ink and colored pencils on mylar, plexiglass, shells, concrete bricks, and plywood. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial.

As part of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023, artists Carlos Franco (b. Puerto Rico) and Keren Anavy (b. Israel) both showed their work in the group exhibition Enmeshed: Dreams of Water at NARS Foundation. Franco’s work often deploys appropriated images and linguistic symbols. He seems to be exploring the contextual complexities behind how signification takes shape and how signification continues to evolve as a context-dependent subject. Anavy’s site-specific work has been connected to the multifaceted paradigm of “ecological order,” according to the book Transnational Belonging and Female Agency in the Arts. Her fabricated environments consider the “liminal geographic spaces between political art and escapism.”

December 26, 2023December 25, 2023

At the Limits: Elena Dahn at Revolver
by Ágnes Berecz

Thin, translucent layers of shaped and stretched natural latex are mounted onto walls or wooden boards to extend the limits of painting—these are Elena Dahn’s New Bodies, on view at the Buenos Aires-based artist’s first New York exhibition. Hosted by Revolver, a contemporary art venue launched in 2008 by Giancarlo Scaglia in Lima and subsequently in Buenos Aires and on the Lower East Side, the exhibition is an invitation to rethink the relationship between body and painting, performance and mark-making, space and surface.

December 18, 2023December 24, 2023

The Immigrant Artist Biennial, In Dialogue
by Xuezhu Jenny Wang

Thread and Fiber: Jovencio de la Paz, Juna Skënderi, and Lilian Shtereva

Lilian Shtereva. *Samovila*, 2023. Yarn, thread, batting, cochineal, and indigo dye on canvas. 24 x 18 inches. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial.

As noted by Julia Halperin in a September T Magazine article, “[l]ong caught in the liminal space between craft and something more prestigious, works of thread and fabric are reaching newfound institutional recognition.” With the advent of AI spurring a complicated mix of overwhelm, anxiety, and curiosity, an increasing interest in fiber art seems to stem from its tactility and materiality, generating a contrasting tension with what’s available in the virtual world. Fiber art is also welcomed by the art-loving public as a medium supporting marginalized communities and their traditions. As participating artists of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023, Jovencio de la Paz, Juna Skënderi, and Lilian Shtereva discuss how their fiber-based practice relates to heritage, empowerment, technology, and dimensionality.

December 15, 2023December 24, 2023

Photograph anemones, not wars: The legacy of Roee Idan
by Anat Or Magal

A field of flowers under a blue sky with Hitachi Seaside Park in the background

Description automatically generated

This article was initially published in Portfolio Magazine in Hebrew on October 25, 2023. It was translated into English and edited by Art Spiel. This publication in Art Spiel is in collaboration with Portfolio Magazine.

Photographer and photojournalist Roee Idan preferred to aim his lens at capturing the quiet drama of nature rather than the fraught tension along Israel’s borders—the first anemone bloom, the winter streams of the northern Negev, the majesty of flash floods in the desert, and the joy of bathers on the beach in summer.

December 11, 2023December 24, 2023

Rachel Frank: Ritual and Rehabilitation
by Hovey Brock

Hot Air

A collage of hands holding a clay dog

Description automatically generated — *Rewilding Franconia Sculpture Park,* Participatory Performance as part of 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial, Franconia Sculpture Park, 2022. Photographer: Rachel Frank

Rachel Frank is a Brooklyn-based artist whose practice includes sculpture, video, and performance. Her art explores our shifting perspectives towards natural history, climate change, and relationships with non-human species. She grew up near Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, the birthplace of American paleontology, where large mammoth and other megafauna fossils were found, altering Western views on extinction and evolution. She works as a staff wildlife care manager at The Wild Bird Fund, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Manhattan.

December 8, 2023December 24, 2023

Zahra Nazari: Interiors
by Etty Yaniv

In Dialogue

Inside Out Oculus, 2022, acrylic on mylar, 36×45.5 in.

In her Interiors painting series, American Iranian-born painter Zahra Nazari draws on prominent features in classical Persian and Islamic architecture—decorative botanical motifs, arch, and particularly, iwan, the large, vaulted hall semi-enclosed and usually walled on three sides, with one end entirely open. Many scholars believe its origin can be traced back to the Parthian era. While looking at Nazari’s luminous surfaces, it may be interesting to keep in mind the dual role of the Persian arch—it serves both decorative and functional purposes—this richly decorated key aesthetic element in Persian architecture functions not only as an ornament but also as a structural support that provides stability. It is also designed to moderate the amount of sunlight that enters space, especially in iwans or other open spaces. Nazari’s frequent use of Mylar as a surface stirs a play on the notion of external and internal light, and simultaneously, her saturated color palette invokes a hot and arid climate with bright, sunlit days and crisp nights. Repetitive and rhythmical, these motifs coalesce into energetic, translucent, and luminous surfaces, evoking an interior space in flux. Zahra Nazari elaborates on her ideas and process in this interview with Art Spiel.